Tuesday, June 26, 2012

The Pallbearer: Harvests Part 3.5

Sheba


Violence is fun.
Creating is ecstasy, teaching a joy.

But violence is fun.

I've always tried to hold myself back, to keep the bile from rising in the back of my throat, to keep myself from separating heads from shoulders with a single sweep.

fourty whacks
fourty whacks


I pulled the triggers and my chainguns spun up. Ghost images of bullets coursing through the hair, air rippling around them. They burrowed through a vapor sea.

And found a wall.

I clenched my mandibles together and kept my hands tight on the triggers. One bladed arm hung ready, the other still held my shield-door.

The bullets were stopping a foot and a half away from him, hanging in mid-air. Solomon was smiling, smoothing out his robes. A grin split his face and metallic teeth clicked in disdain. His eyes were flickering, tea candles in Chinese takeout boxes threatening to die. Behind them, his mind spun, searched, tracked, calculated.

My guns kept spinning but no bullets came out. I too was empty.

Solomon lowered his hands and the bullets dropped.

"A gift from our Lord Adam 2.0. He deigned to share with me his family's gift."

"It won't save you Solomon."

"I have already been saved. I am here to purge you from our world and save the children that came with you. We've already discussed this."

I twisted the bladed arm that held my door-shield and hurled it at him. Solomon slipped aside at the last moment, spinning a quarter circle at the knee, bending in half. The door soared over him and he was upright again. Moving for me.

I brought my scythe arms crosswise, high and low. Solomon leapt forward, pulling himself into a spin. He passed between my arms and charged in close. Each of the two handed-arms growing from my midsection grabbed an arm of his and pulled.

He spun at the shoulders and planted two feet into one of the makeshift armor plates wrapped around me. It dented like soup cans dent. I pulled tighter at his arms and heard gears grinding. Naughahyde smile. Jellied pain for eyes.

Solomon caught a foot under the plate and kicked up. It peeled off of me but I refused to let him go. He caught the plate between his feet and brought it down hard on my left arm where it joined my body. The plate cut through flesh and bone and a joint.

I screamed. My left arm still clutched at him but my right let go. Solomon was there, grabbing, twisting, wrenching.

"Like tearing legs off of a fly."

He was down, between my legs, slipping away.

Pain. No pain. No. Where. My arm. Fucker took my arms.

I slammed my scythe arms into the floor and squealed. grinding brakes grinding teeth grinding bones

Lizzie get your axe
get your axe
fourty whacks
hack hack hack


"Solomon."

"Yes abomination?"

"That was unwise."

"Are you done talking? I'm looking to finish disarming you."

Laughter. Was laughing.

In my head Samson screamed. Something about:

"ratses!
legion legion
where's Miss Natty?
legion legion."

I lunged for Solomon this time. He cut for the left. I dove for him, saw his mind click-whir and him start to backflip away. My right scythe-arm pinned him to the wall through his shoulder.

Oil gushed from beneath his fake skin. I stood, towering over him, drawing in my remaining left arm.

fourty whacks
fourty whacks
get your axe


"You are not so wise as you think Solomon."

He spit at me.

"You will roast in Hell with all the others who are obsolete."

I strained, the blood still dripping from my sides. My face pulled together, fully human for a moment, and I smiled. No pigment to change in his skin. My nerves to twitter in flesh. But his eyes shook and quivered and that was all I needed.

"You're delusional Solomon. You know what happens to the deluded. They receive lobotomies. Don't worry. You'll have peace soon enough. Won't remember a thing."

fourty one

I left his corpse in the corner when I was done. I stepped on my chainguns and pulled the triggers with the very tips of my bladed-arms. They fired air, spinning wildly. I pulled the triggers until smoke rose from the barrels. I twisted my scythe-arms through them and pulled them up, pressing the barrels to my sides.

I screamed with a human mouth as the wounds were cauterized closed by the heat. I dropped the floor, twisting, kicking, thrashing. A fly with its wings ripped off.

When the pain became a steady flow instead of a pulsing wave, I turned back into a human. I laid there, naked on the floor, ribs and much of the flesh around my waist missing. Not missing. Across the floor still in the form of an arm.

I crawled across the floor to Solomon's body and tugged the robes from his corpse, wrapping myself in them. I pushed myself up. As I stumbled down the tunnel the tanks had made, I stubbed my foot on long, sharp rod amongst the rubble on the floor. I flipped it up into my arms and spun it slowly.

It'd do.

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